Policy Insights

Premium increases in the health insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will likely be higher in 2017 than in recent years; however, the actual average benchmark premium in the ACA marketplaces in 2016 is below what the Congressional Budget Office projected for 2016 before the health law was passed. How actual marketplace premiums compare to what CBO expected in doing those budget projections is an important factor in determining whether the ACA continues to be on track to reducing the deficit.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released an analysis of a bill that would repeal grants to states under the health reform law to help them establish health insurance purchasing exchanges. Not surprisingly, CBO finds that the bill would reduce federal spending due to the fact that expected grants won’t…

According to the December Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, the October downturn in the share of Americans with a favorable view of the health reform law has been fully reversed in December and overall opinion on the law returned to the roughly even split seen for most of 2011. Forty-three percent…

There are multiple sources of insurance coverage and care for people with HIV in the United States.  These include public programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare, and the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, as well as private coverage through an employer or in the individual market. Medicaid, the nation’s principal safety-net…

Lately conservatives have been feeling like losers in health care and complaining loudly about it. They don’t like Obamacare or the increase in the government’s role in health care or the federal spending it brings with it, even if those things result in coverage for more than 30 million uninsured…

When the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health insurance marketplaces (also known as “exchanges”) go online this October, millions of people are expected to apply for private insurance coverage. Nobody expects the launch will be perfect, with no hitches and problems.  The law not only replaces a fragmented and confusing assortment…

In this Policy Insight, Jen Kates and Josh Michaud look at the prospects for the future of U.S. global health policy, examining whether long-term bipartisan support may be tested during a time of political transition, and identifying key areas of consensus among policymakers and the public.

There has been a substantial amount of focus on the recently released draft regulations governing state-based health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). And that’s appropriate, since the exchanges have the important roles under reform of providing consumers with easier access to insurance and facilitating tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies…

This perspective addresses how insurance markets might respond if the US Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case. The case challenges the legality of premium and cost-sharing subsidies for low- and middle-income people buying insurance in states where the federal government rather than the state is operating the marketplace under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Halbig case, if it prevails, would have far-reaching side effects on the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate and the functioning of the individual insurance market.